Shadows

*wakes up, realising he had passed out from too much coke and pop rocks* Um. YOU POISONED MY TOAST!

I actually smacked my head when I read that. In every game, someone freaks out early on making themselves the perfect target. That person has historically been loyal. This would have been the first time a scum was taken out for it. I still don't know how he survived.

I wasn't initially sure I could turn him. The whole "seperate investigator to determine if you can convert" situation is difficult when they are killed before investigating anyone. You didn't actually convince me, Hinck did when he started going after Striker, who we clearly needed to survive long enough to kill off the town in the night, though I do remember you suggesting him early on. Or maybe because I seized power on day 1 and everyone came to expect it. I don't really see how that is possible, given that I would send out the recommended nightly actions and those included who he should block. I know we didn't keep it from you intentionally, even if somehow it didn't get through, there would have been no point. Yeah, I didn't really want to. Whenever a game promotes the killing of one of your own, I feel like there should be one extra scum to make up for it. Add that we could only convert twice, and even that had a built in failure possibility, and the scum were actually fairly weak in this game. We just got really lucky in a few key ways and it all worked out. Well, for most of us.

Sure.

*stands up* All right, that's about enough here, I guess it's time for the truth to be told... I'm an FBI agent. *places one hand on his hip* I was planted on the train to determine what Miss Elizabeth Rose Thornton, aka Elisa Ruprecht Tornado, aka Ellen Rumplestiltskin Toblerone, aka Ed Ross Thompson had planned for this train. See, she/he is a notorious jewel thief, and we expected that in reality, something of great value was being transported, something she/he planned to use one of you to steal. *glances around the room* The young girl we discovered dead on the coal car was, in fact, one of our agents who had infiltrated the Thornton criminal organization in an attempt to learn the details of this heist. Sadly, she was unsuccessful. *paces to the other side of the room* I immediately recognised the two bodies in the basement as Rick and Laura Gnarles, famous society types who occasionally get mixed up in murder investigations. Seems that they have now retired in Willoughby. I'm sure they would be appalled. *shakes his head, sadly, then stands at full height, pointing at each of the passengers* What we are dealing with here is a cold blooded killer. No, not a lizard of some kind, I'm speaking metaphorically. I intend to tell you just who that killer is! *gives the entire group a menacing look* So, this is the part of the program where I accuse each one of you until someone cracks, who wants to go first? *passes out, foaming at the mouth*

*gives Aida Arin a cookie* Welcome to the dark side, we've been waiting for you. I say we toss the mayor next. The mayor is always either a villain or a dupe in these things. Either way, good riddance to bad luggage.

And on that note, we're going to wrap up this speculation-fest. It might be true, it might not, nobody really knows, and if I posted every bit of wrong information I've gotten from customer service, you'd be amazed by the shocking details. I think we're going to lock this, given some poor attitude issues that we don't need to see continue. Thanks for playing, here's your parting gifts.

I've been happily voting for townies for days. Crap, now you've confused me too.

Bye bye, Killin' George! Why should you get to have all the fun?

Seriously... when you post sentence after sentence without a space between them, it's like you're an 8yr old who is breathlessly telling a story, then passes out at the end. Remember: Sentence, punctuation, space. Rinse. Repeat. Everyone is happy.

You're listed as the next mystery already and MotEE is in some kind of closing state, so if you want to start your signup, this would be a good time for it. Didn't I previously mention that the list isn't set in stone? Sounds like an interesting twist. There really aren't as many eager players as you would think, and certainly not enough to split the experienced players between two games. Mafia and Mystery tends to draw the same players, so 2 mafias and a mystery is 3 games at the same time, which would require some serious overlapping of players. The better players participate a lot, which would be demanding with several games going, plus the hosts like playing and playing 2 games while hosting would be difficult at best. To take our current situation as an example, Draggy is still playing MotEE, will be hosting MC2, and I'm sure he'll want in on Zeph's mystery. That's a nightmare unless you have no life at all. I guess Draggy is lucky there. Bottom line, there's no rush, let's keep a reasonable pace and keep it fun as opposed to forcing things to move too quickly. Keep playing and reading and learning and when the current queue has lightened up, you'll probably be ready.

Me too! Seriously, at one point I figured I was done for and started just amping it up more and more until it was so over the top that I couldn't reread the crap I was spewing. Then, like a miracle, things started fitting together and I regained my fragile hold on sanity and started manipulating. That was my plan! If they had ever reached 1 vote short of conviction, I was going to vote for myself and start stabbing people and oinking!

You never know when a new one will pop up like that.

How Grim! YEAH! You tell 'em! Uh huh, that's right, he means you!

Uh huh.

All hail the Cult of Toast! You bagel people are clearly heretics.

Uh huh, I can tell by my name and title. I still you too. Metagaming! Just remember, if we're on the same side, I'm a good ally to have. Pretty much. We discussed strategy during the day then I would send out the final results at the beginning of each night. It kept us coordinated and effective without allowing for the kinds of mistakes I saw players make while I was hosting Galactic Paranoia. Everyone should host a game eventually, it's a great learning experience. We had no connection to you, good or bad, so no one would suspect any of us for it. Someone had to die each night, that was yours.

You gave yourself away the day you specifically said that the hatchet killer must have been blocked the night before, without even acting like you were sad that a townie had been killed. It's important to remember that you might not specifically have an alignment, but you still need to act loyal to increase your odds of survival. You know, if you had contacted me when I made my first public appeal to the hatchet killer, I would have found out the requirement for you to win and we could have worked together to kill off the townies quicker, probably knocking a couple of game days off. You would have been a valuable asset and ended up being a winner as well. See? It always pays to cooperate with old Uncle Shiester Shadows. Oh, and despite how it looked, Sal was never my protector (I mostly relied on townies for that ), but I do give you credit for making up that story about us talking while coming out of the theatre. Still, it's kind of weird being framed with false evidence when you're already guilty. Nice try, though! In any game you win, that will happen (though it didn't happen in Baritones I, for example). Really, even losing can lead to that. The point is that you can't judge future games by past ones, it's all too random. Sure, sometimes people will resort to the same method over and over, and that you can spot, but in the end it's guesswork until you have evidence, and no loyal side can afford to randomly vote people off until they get lucky. At the same time, not voting can be just as bad, so you have to rely on what people say as a clue to their alignment. The biggest enemy of the loyal side are the loyal players themselves. If the people who acted guilty but weren't in this game hadn't brought suspicion on themselves, I would have been dead by day 4. Statistically, I'll probably be loyal in my next game. How's that for using past performance as an indicator? I didn't trust you either, and I knew you were loyal.

But what about the dead people???

YES! Yes I will. No comment.

Ok, random thoughts here. 1. It's much easier to be loyal than scum because no one hates you if you win while loyal. Win as scum and suddenly you must be a shiester. 2. I hate you, TinyP. I can buy being scum randomly, but you made me Rotrigous AGAIN, and don't tell me you didn't. I killed you as him in MC1 and you dealt me the same role and I had to kill JimButcher here. At least he won this time. 3. The Rotrigous Gambit is NOT the meat shield. The Rotrigous Gambit is saying, "if he isn't scum, kill me tomorrow!" The meat shield is just a fortunate byproduct of it. (and no, it didn't make me the mob boss after that, it just meant we had no boss and the killer could act on his own) 3. I play scum the same way I play loyal. Decode that, and you'll learn some of my secrets. 4. Don't rant at me in one of these. I rant, and it's one thing I do pretty well. I don't know why anyone would believe me, but they frequently do and will end up killing you. Except Hinck. If Hinck and I rant, it's doesn't mean much, we almost always do it, even when we're on the same side. 5. We scum rarely killed the people arguing against me, we mostly targeted people we thought might vote against us later so you couldn't claim that I was having them killed (oddly, people claimed it anyway). 6. Losing Awesomestar on day 1 was a critical loss for us, since it meant I didn't know if someone could be converted or not. That sucks when you only get 2 shots at it, even if they fail. Make the 2nd one a success, and it would have been A LOT easier. 7. FBI. Seriously? They never fought the mob, and they didn't even exist in the 30's. 8. Everyone is innocent? Everyone is guilty? It's TinyP, messing with your head. He's a witch, you know. 9. Be patient. Sometimes you think it's all about to fall apart, and something magical happens. I expected to die every day from day 4 on. Bottom line, it was a lot of fun and equally annoying at the same time. I hate playing scum, believe it or not. Just remember: Because someone plays something in one game, it doesn't mean they're doing it again in the next, nor does it mean that they will use the same techniques. The tricky player you kill off early might have just been the one who could have saved you if you hadn't. Seriously. Thanks to everyone for playing! I love a Grim ending.

You can say that again. Moving on. It's a gas tanker. Please don't tell us what you can do with gas or I'll shoot you.

IF you get to LA. My good friends Smith and Wesson aren't absolutely convinced that's going to happen if you start becoming difficult. Now, as we said, you will stay in the dining car. Clear? I like the way you're thinking, but alas, we're not going to be allowed to have any fun, that's already obvious. Can't we just reverse the train and go back home? I'm not really all that fired up on getting to LA anymore. This whole thing has been a disaster as it is and we're just going to end up answering a lot of questions about dead bodies we don't really know anything about. You know what, forget that, I know exactly what to do. JEB! Use the tractor to pull the tanker back where it started or at least farther away from the train and I'll ride along on the tractor with you. When we get there, we'll disconnect and assume a safe distance. I'll use this handy dynamite I've been carrying since the mill to make short work of our minor obstacle which should make a nice little fireworks show. I'll place it high on the tanker to avoid track damage, and yes, I know the physics of the situation, I've done it before. I have a gun, dynamite, and a tanker of gas/fumes, if anyone tries to tell me I can't blow the crap out of it, I'll put a bullet through their fool head and call an end to this whole extravaganza. Are we clear? If any small bits are left on the track when we're done, we can just pull them off with the tractor. Or I'll blow them up again. I don't much care at this point. Let's get this done.

This is not the "who gave me my title" thread, but you are certainly living up to yours. Don't flatter yourself, Staudie is a special kind of annoying.

We'll just push it. Then, if we run out of fuel again, we'll have some with us! Let's get the flock out of this town!